Chopped glass fibers are commonly used as reinforcement materials in thermoplastic articles. Typically, such fibers are formed by drawing molten glass into filaments through a bushing or orifice plate, applying a sizing composition containing lubricants, coupling agents, and film-forming binder resins to the filaments, gathering the filaments into strands, chopping the fiber strands into segments of the desired length, and drying the sizing composition. These chopped strand segments are thereafter mixed with a polymerized resin, and the mixture supplied to a compression- or injection-molding machine to be formed into glass fiber reinforced plastic articles. Typically, the chopped strands are mixed with pellets of a thermoplastic polymer, and the mixture supplied to an extruder wherein the resin is melted, the integrity of the glass fiber strands is destroyed and the fibers are dispersed throughout the molten resin, and the fiber/resin dispersion is formed into pellets. These pellets are then fed to the molding machine and formed into molded articles having a substantially homogeneous dispersion of the glass fibers throughout.
Unfortunately, however, chopped glass fibers made via such processes are typically bulky and do not flow well. Consequently, such fibers are difficult to handle and have been problematic in automated processing equipment.
One attempt at solving this problem has been to compact the chopped strands into denser rod-shaped bundles or pellets to improve the flowability of the chopped strands and enable the use of automated equipment to weigh and transport the glass fibers for mixing with the thermoplastic resins. Such a process is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,840,755, wherein wet chopped strands are rolled, preferably on a vibrating carrier, to round the strands and compact them into denser, cylindrically shaped pellets. While such methods and apparatus tend to provide denser, more cylindrically shaped pellets exhibiting better flowability, they are undesirably limited in certain respects.
For example, the pellet size and fiber content are generally limited by the size and number of fibers in the chopped strand, in that the process is designed to avoid multiple chopped strand segments from adhering together to form pellets containing more fibers than are present in a single chopped strand. Consequently, to obtain pellets having a suitable bulk density and a sufficient ratio of diameter to length to exhibit good flowability, the strand from which the segments are chopped usually must be formed of a large number of filaments. However, increasing the number of filaments required to be formed and combined into a single strand undesirably complicates the forming operation.
In an attempt to overcome these shortcomings, U.S. Pat. No. 5,578,535 discloses glass fiber pellets that are from about 20 to 30 percent denser than the individual glass strands from which they are made, and from about 5 to 15 times larger in diameter. These pellets are prepared by hydrating cut strand segments to a level sufficient to prevent filamentization but insufficient to cause the strand segments to agglomerate into a clump, and mixing the hydrated strand segments for a time sufficient to form pellets. Suitable mixing includes a process that will keep the fibers moving over and around one another, such as tumbling, agitating, blending, commingling, stirring, or intermingling.
Although the disclosed pellets can be made by such diverse mixing processes, it has been discovered that many of such processes are either too inefficient to be used commercially, or cannot be adequately controlled to produce a uniform pellet product that provides the resulting composite article with strength characteristics comparable to those made from nonpelleted chopped strand fibers. For example, the use of a modified disk pelletizer frequently results in excessive residence time of the formed pellets within the mixer, which results in degradation of the pellets due to the abrasive nature of glass fiber pellets rubbing against one another. Such pellet degradation ultimately reduces the strength characteristics of the molded articles made therewith.
Accordingly, a need exists for an efficient pellet-forming process that controllably yields a uniform glass fiber pellet product that provides strength characteristics equal to nonpelleted chopped strand fibers in composite molded articles. Such a need is fulfilled by the present invention, which is summarized and described in detail below.